Unfortunately for the people of the world everything is going according to the New World Order Plan. But what is this New World Order Plan? In a nutshell the Plan is this. The Dark Agenda of the secret planners of the New World Order is to reduce the world's population to a "sustainable" level "in perpetual balance with nature" by a ruthless Population Control Agenda via Population and Reproduction Control. A Mass Culling of the People via Planned Parenthood, toxic adulteration of water and food supplies, release of weaponised man-made viruses, man-made pandemics, mass vaccination campaigns and a planned Third World War. Then, the Dark Agenda will impose upon the drastically reduced world population a global feudal-fascist state with a World Government, World Religion, World Army, World Central Bank, World Currency and a micro-chipped population. In short, to kill 90% of the world's population and to control all aspects of the human condition and thus rule everyone, everywhere from the cradle to the grave.

Chivalry was the system, spirit or customs of medieval knighthood. It was the idealised code of gallantry and honour that medieval knights were pledged to observe. It was founded on the principal virtues of piety, honour, valour, courtesy, chastity and loyalty.

Chivalry simply means in its original sense 'service on horseback,' and it is derived from the French word 'chevalerie'. It is of the same origin therefore as our more modern words cavalier and cavalry. Chivalry is rooted in the customs and outlook of the Germanic tribes, and especially the Franks under the Carolingians, it spread to feudal France and Spain, and thence to the rest of Christian Europe, reaching its acme in the 12th and 13th centuries. The first three Crusades were the great testing ground of the ideal of chivalry, during which it assumed a deep spiritual significance. These were the great religious battles in which the knights fought in the name of Christianity against the Muslims, the heathens, in Palestine. The Knights Hospitallers and Knights Templars were the earliest orders of chivalry, and were founded to serve pilgrims to Palestine.

The favourite sport of chivalry during times of peace was the tournament, tourney or joust, that is, a combat on horseback between two knights or men-at-arms with lances. The tournament, usually under royal licence, was designed to show the equestrian skills and military valour of the participating knights. At first, the tourney was usually a confused affair of mock battles between groups of knights, but it was eventually formalised reaching a high degree of ceremony in the 15th century. Elaborate ritual, in which heraldry played an important part, replaced the frenetic skirmishing that typifies the early decades of the tournament. The issuing and accepting of challenges, conditions of engagement, and points scoring, according to the number of broken lances or blows sustained, were introduced as means of control and reward. The 'tilt' was the most familiar contest in which two knights, with lances tilted towards each other, charged on either side of an anti-collision barrier. However, there were other simple mounted combat contests such as jousting, with lances, and the tourney, with swords, but there were also mock sieges and assaults on fortified positions. Accidental deaths were avoided by the use of blunted weapons and padded armour, but deaths did occur, such as that of Henry II of France in 1559, killed by Gabriel de Montgomery in a tournament. The 15th century saw a decline in the real value of chivalry, due to the changing nature of warfare and the moral values of society. Gunpowder and the pikestaff rendered the heavy cavalry, the most potent weapon for over a thousand years, vulnerable if not obsolete. In this new world of firepower, cavalry and chivalry were increasingly edged to the margins in the business of war, and, tournaments survived merely as ritualised ceremonies that harked back to a lost era.

The word 'knight' is derived from the Saxon for a servant ('cniht') and gradually became applied to the immediate attendants of a feudal lord. That is, knight was a mounted-armed soldier serving a feudal superior in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages. A man became a knight when he had been ceremonially inducted into special military rank, usually after completing service as page and squire. However, the order could also be conferred by any man who was himself a knight, and many an esquire who had conducted himself valiantly in battle was knighted forthwith by the superior whom he had till then served.

The title "Sir," which is prefixed to the Christian names of all knights, is derived from the Middle English word 'sire'. However, some authorities argue it comes from the Greek word 'Kyr', which is an abbreviation of the Greek word signifying Lord, whilst others affirm that it came through the Latin 'senior'. However, it is clear that the title is of high antiquity and has always been held in great honour. The knight was therefore the personification of the ideal of chivalry. He was obliged to observe and accomplish all that chivalry exemplified, and thus, the knight swore to accomplish the duties of his station. The qualities of an ideal knight included speaking the truth, protecting and championing the weak or vanquished, maintaining right, to practice courtesy, especially to strangers, fulfilling obligations of duty, and to vindicate honour. A lofty and noble standard indeed. The chivalric ethic represented the fusion of Christian and military concepts of conduct, whilst those who practised chivalrous conduct were deemed the best of their time. In this context, the English poet, Christopher Anstey, could write of the knight:

"How he welcomes at once all the world and his wife, / And how civil to folk he ne'er saw in his life."

By the 11th century the order of knighthood had become formalised and involved many duties and responsibilities before the aspirant was awarded his golden spurs that was one of the symbols of knighthood. Even kings and other high born men had to train for knighthood, serving first as pages, then as esquires, before finally being presented with the golden spurs. Knighthood was therefore a system of apprenticeship. As boys, knights' sons became pages in the castles of other knights, from the age of 14; they learnt horsemanship and military skills and were themselves knighted at the age of 21. Before a knight was finally admitted into his order, he was obliged to hold a vigil or nightwatch in a chapel where he gave himself up to solemn meditation before assuming his new duties and privileges. Knighthood therefore was the special honour bestowed upon a man by dubbing, when he is invested with the right to bear arms, or was awarded his golden spurs and admitted in to one of the orders of chivalry.

The emergence of knighthood as a social class was a slow process in England, and in the late 11th and early 12th centuries, the knight was the lowest rank of those who held land in return for military service. Their status improved in the 12th century as the culture of Europe became increasingly more sophisticated and the market in free land developed. Knights became more active in local administration, whilst the Crusades brought into existence new orders of knights that give them a distinct identity and an elevated social status. The first tangible military order to appear was the Knights Hospitallers (c.1070), then the Knights of the Sepulchre (1113), and the Knights Templars (1118). The exemplar of the phenomenon of knighthood as an effective military class was the German Order of the Teutonic Knights (1190), which pushed eastwards on the frontiers with Poland and acquired Prussia for itself. England the first and most important chivalric order was the Order of the Garter (1348), which was followed by the Order of the Bath (1399). In France, the Order of the Star was created in 1352, whilst in Burgundy the Order of the Golden Fleece was initiated in 1429. Today there are two classes of knight: those admitted into the general fraternity of honour; and those who in addition to this are enrolled in some special companionship or Order. Secular literature of the medieval period in which chivalry flourished takes knighthood and chivalry as its main theme. Since ancient times, people have developed formal rules of ideal behaviour, that is, conventionally accepted standards of proper social, professional, or official behaviour. These rules, written or unwritten, are known as codes of etiquette. In addition, things that were deemed 'de rigueur' French of strictness were those attributes required by the prevailing rules of etiquette to be possessed by the members of the class. Chivalry was therefore a social control stratagem that was designed to bring Christian morality into warfare.

In 364 AD, the professional soldier, Valentinian I (321–375), the Western emperor, appointed his brother Valens co-emperor of the Eastern Empire. The two co-regents were preoccupied with securing the borders of empire from increasingly violent incursions by Teutonic tribes. They managed to defend the empire against Germanic invasions, and restored Roman supremacy in Britain and Africa. Valens also contained the threat of invasion by the Visigoths, who defeated by the Huns, he allowed to settle in Roman territory. However, the restive Goths soon rebelled and overran Thrace. For a time Valens succeeded in holding the Goths at bay, but on a hot arid day in 378 AD at Hadrianople in Greece a momentousbattle occurred that foreshadowed the future of warfare. The imperial Roman infantry, the conquerors of all in antiquity, were annihilated by a horde of Gothic heavy cavalry. Forty thousand men of the legions, thirty-five of their commanders, the generals of foot and horse, the Count of the Palace, even the emperor himself were all killed before the night fell on the terrible scene. A contemporary, the historian Ammianus Marcellinus, wrote of the scene hardly able to comprehend what he had witnessed:

"One black pool of blood disfigured all, and wherever the eye turned, it could see nothing but piles of dead, and corpses trampled on without mercy."

Although the Roman army had vanquished all previous enemies, it had met its match in the undisciplined Gothic heavy cavalry that proved itself decisive in the battle. The arrival of the Gothic cavalry on the battlefield not only changed the course of the battle at Hadrianople but also warfare in the West for the next thousand years. The Roman light cavalry was no match for more heavily equipped Gothic horsemen and was simply swept off the field. Here at this fateful battle, a cavalry force proved itself the complete master of the Roman heavy infantry, themselves the master of the battlefields of antiquity for over five hundred years. The Roman infantry reeled under the merciless onslaught from the Gothic cavalry charges and simply fell into disarray and eventually collapsed. The battle at Hadrianople is the watershed that separates the ancient world conquered by disciplined heavy cavalry and the early modern world created by indiscipline barbarian heavy cavalry. For the military initiative had passed to the barbarians and would never be truly be regained again by Rome or Constantinople. The supremacy of heavy infantry on the battle field had ended and military power now ultimately lay no longer with the legions but with the horsemen. The scale of Rome's defeat was truly staggering, not only because of the tremendous fatalities, but in the fact that the greatest military machine in the Classical World, the Roman Legion, was in effect obsolete. Consequently, the nature of warfare had changed, and thus the Battle of Hadrianople was a key moment in world history where power irreversibly shifted to the barbarian and his heavy cavalry.

Constantinople itself was now threatened, but by astute diplomacy of the new Christian emperor Theodosius (I) the Great managed to save both his own dominions and the throne of his Western colleague Gratian. Upon the death of Theodosius in 395, the unity of the empire was also extinguished, and the remaining history of the Western Empire was chaotic and bloody as waves of Germanic tribes swept across it with increasing ease. The recurring theme in all these incursions was this: Teutonic cavalry. The hooves of the Teutonic cavalry pummelled and ripped the fabric of the imperial Roman Empire. Hordes of horseman, bred on the steppes, the vast grasslands beyond the Volga, tore through the classical world savouring the energising tastes of death, plunder and destruction. These horsemen were born to the saddle and despised the lot of the infantry, who they destroyed with ever-increasing variety of tactics. The ancient and tested military tactics of imperial Rome were found wanting against the power of the heavy Germanic cavalry. These horse-archers could shoot arrows at speed and with accuracy that confounded the prejudices of the Roman strategists. Protected by cuirass, greaves, and small shield slung over their left shoulder, armed with bow and sword, and sometimes lance, these horse-archers were indeed an enemy to fear. However, the real dreadnoughts were the heavy cavalries of the Visigoths and Lombard. These horsemen were protected by a coat of mail, a shield, and a crested helmet, they were armed with a mace, axe, and long sword, but more deadly was the great lance. The combination of horse and lance was the epitome of un-mechanised warfare. The power inherent in this combination when suitably deployed was awesome. No infantry could prevail against well-commanded heavy cavalry.

The Teuton hordes rode at will across the Western Empire taking of it what they wanted, despising the civilising aspects that to them appeared strange and intimidating. The wonderful architecture of the empire, a product of centuries of genius, the aqueduct, forum, villa and palace to them were artefacts of men who avoided the life affirming business of war. The products of civilisation and high culture did not hold any attractions for these men of war that were tied to each other by the ancient eugenic consciousness of blood-ties, and the blood-loyalties of the tribe. This unsophisticated social arrangement of the tribe was why the Roman historian Tacitus could write that 'they do not do business public or private except in arms.' Moreover, strength and courage were their only virtues observed the Roman, loyalty to their war-chief their only honour, and the banding together into the war-party almost their only organisation. Only through war could a young man prove himself worthy of membership of the tribe. The sole aristocracy of the tribe was the chief and his chosen band of warriors, the comitatus, as Tacitus called them. This consisted of comites or companions who were the personal attendants of the Teutonic chieftain, who later became the royal household when the rootless life finally ended, and formal, static royal courts were established.

Young men became respected members of their tribe only after displaying courage in battle, vying recklessly for the attentions of their chief during battle. "When the fighting begins." wrote Tacitus, "it is shameful for a chief to be outdone in bravery, and equally shameful for the followers not to match the courage of the leader: to survive one's chief and return from battle is a foul disgrace that lasts as long a life. To defend him, to support him, to turn one's own deeds to his glory, this is the main oath of their allegiance." During periods of relative peace, the warrior despised the mundane tasks of existence and wallowed in alcoholic euphoria until their chief raised the next call to arms. Then, roused from the enervating stupefaction of peace, their hearts gladdened by the sound of war, the warrior took to his 'charger and murderous invincible spear' and eagerly sought the violence of war as the test of manhood, and the plunder of war as the reward of life.

The decay of the civil order in western Europe and the retreat of the decadent Roman legions allowed free reign to the marauding Germanic hordes. This new age of tribal fealty together with ever changing alliances between tribes drowned the old civil values in blood and ignorance. The old virtues lauded since the time of the Plato were swept aside and a new moral code put in their stead based upon the power of horse and lance. A new figure rode through this new landscape. He was a member of the select few, the band of brothers, which made up the comitatus, the tribal chief's chosen few. He was a warrior, a fighting-machine, whose superiority rested on horse and lance, and who had proved himself in the heat and passion of battle to be a worthy member of the tribal elite. The elite warrior of the tribe entered war with abandon and relish, while his undisciplined courage made him a terrifying capricious merchant of death. He was bound to warfare but with no more noble an aim than self-aggrandisement and the glorification of the war-chief. These feral beings were the first knights of Christendom. The successive waves of Teuton war-bands contained these prototype knights, and the trail of death and devastation across Europe left by them was testament to their moral qualities.

The Franks were the tribe destined to take command of Europe and create an empire that rivalled the old imperial model in estate if not quality. The expansion of their lands caused many enemies to arise on their borders. Saracen in the south, Bavarian, Lombard, and Avar in the east, Saxon and Friesian in the north, all demanded attention if the integrity of empire was to be maintained. The response to these disparate threats was the development of the cavalry as a fast mobile and powerful army that could mobilise and dispatch to all parts of the expanding empire at an instant. The great empire of Charlemagne that stretched from the Spanish Ebro to the German Elbe, from the North Sea to the Adriatic was secured by the ever-ready presence of heavy cavalry that was the heir to the élan and ethos of the comitatus. The image of these horseman was the ironclad warrior, fearsome to behold and seemingly impervious to the effects of mundane weaponry. The noise and spectacle of massed heavy cavalry was a frightening sight to those that were the object of its intentions. The powerful blood-consciousness of the tribe still imbued these warriors with an irresistible urge to wilful destruction for the glorification of self and king. The tribal blood ties nourished power without responsibility that itself fed of the chaos of cultures in collision. The Frankish tribe had no concept of the state and barely considered the higher aspects of morality and justice. Their religion was nominally Christian but this was a thin veneer masking the deep ancient atavistic Teuton religion based on the worship of ancestors and the forces of creation. The knights of the Frankish lands were only kept in hand by the will of an exceptional leader and the atavistic reverence for bloodlines. Europe at this time was a cruel and capricious society that was subject to forces, both internal and external, which could destroy the fragility of nascent culture, which struggled to arise from these seemingly inauspicious elements. Covetous neighbours on the fringes of Western Europe eyed the Frankish lands with envy and sought any means to seize or filch land and possessions from them. Moreover, there were many enemies and usurpers that appeared over the horizon to stake their claim to a piece of the empire.

Christendom's soft underbelly became vulnerable when the Byzantines lost control of the Mediterranean Sea to the newborn Muslim states of north Africa. At the same time, the maritime supremacy of the Byzantine Empire was challenged in the Black Sea by the restive Vikings, in the guise of their progeny, the Rus warrior-traders, who had suddenly appeared in 860. The erosion of Byzantine sea power allowed pirates and adventurers to raid the entire Mediterranean littoral at will. The Sarranceni, the Saracen, a name given by the Europeans of the time to the Arabs, the Berbers and the Moors, exploited the power vacuum in the Mediterranean and delivered the southern attack on Europe. Sarranceni and Greek pirates patrolled the Mediterranean attacking merchant vessels and undefended harbour towns and villages. Christendom was under siege by land and sea at this time and both East and West Empires struggled to vanquish enemies intent on their destruction. The Muslim successes on the sea were a result of the preoccupation of the Christian empires to secure their landward flanks to the detriment of their maritime interests.

On land, Saracen hordes in the tenth century menaced the Alpine region, which especially relished plundering monasteries and waylaying travellers for their treasures. These brigands were only extinguished in 975 AD when an outraged William of Provence attacked their stronghold in Le Freinet (now St Tropez) to free his friend and confessor, St Magilo, the Abbot of Cluny. To the east, the Frankish Empire was in a state of continuous siege from migrating hordes coming out of the vast spaces of the dusty steppes. However, the foe that would menace the empire for over a century were the Hungarian and Magyar tribes, which were a nomadic people of mixed Ugric and Turkic origin, originally settled in the region between the Volga and the Ural Mountains. This people, seething with savage heathen lusts, ravaged the eastern borders of the Frankish Empire and by 860 they were laying waste Bavaria and forty years later they had entered northern Italy threatening Rome itself. In 895, the Byzantine emperor, Leo VI, galvanised the Magyars to attack the Bulgar Khanate. The Bulgar khan Symeon retaliated by inciting the Pechenegs, recent arrivals on the Dnieper, to invade Magyar territory. The Magyars fled west and settle in central Europe, on the River Theiss, when Árpád, chief of the Magyar tribe, displaced the resident Huns and Slavs, and conquered the area corresponding to modern Hungary, and founded the Arpad Dynasty.

Ten years later, they were on the move again. After defeating a German and Slav army at Pressburg, the Magyars overran and destroyed the Moravian kingdom and began to cross over the River Elbe and raid Saxony. In 910, the Magyars defeat King Louis 'the Child' of Germany near Augsburg, and by 924 their rampage across the Carolingian Empire found them as far as Otranto, in southern Italy, and Nimes in France, where the plague of dysentery stopped them in their tracks. In 924, the Magyars resumed their raids against the decaying Carolingian Empire. In Italy, they burned the northern city of Pavia, but King Rudolph of Italy and Hugh of Arles, the effective ruler of Provence, managed to drive them off into southern France. They also invade Germany, where King Henry I 'the Fowler' obtained a truce for Saxony, which he used to strengthen his duchy by building fortified towns. However, by 955 their star crashed to the ground when they were defeated by King Otto I of Germany on the Lechfeld, near Augsburg. Their raids on Western Europe now ceased and they began a settled life in Hungary. Pope Sylvester crowned Stephen (c.977-1038) as the first king of their country in 1000, who quelled the restive tribe, established unity and introduced Christianity. A century of wanton destruction and arbitrary violence against the nascent civilisation of Western Europe by these rootless predators had evoked terror throughout the settled, although intermittently ill-defended, Frankish lands.

If the torment of the Saracen and Magyar from the south and east were not enough to endure, a greater threat from the north came over the horizon. This was the Viking, whose incursions caused immense misery to the settled peoples of Western Europe. Compelled by wanderlust that was peculiar to the German peoples, these warriors erupted onto the scene with a devastating assault on the nascent culture of Europe. They travelled by boat rather than horse and every harbour and river was a welcoming portal to plunder and spoliation. For over a century the sinister longboats lined with shields brought terror to all parts of north Western Europe and beyond. Nor did they stop at the water's edge, for they soon learnt to round up horses at the river's end and pillage the hinterland to the consternation of the countryside. The wild Northmen symbolised everything the Christian peoples feared most: heathen, pagan barbarity. 'To yield is to become the barbarian's slave; to fight is to cast our bones on waste ground'; thus was the lamentation of a contemporary chronicler of the Viking onslaught.

It was a sudden eruption from Scandinavia, but sustained and murderous. The Swedes journeyed up German and Russian rivers and from their great trading-post at Kiev they were in striking distance of Byzantium itself. The Norwegians kept to northern waters and raided Scotland, Ireland, Faroe Isles, Iceland, and beyond to the Americas. The Danes divided their covetous attentions between Anglo-Saxon England and the continent, especially Frisia, Francia, Spain, and the western Mediterranean.

The first thirteen Viking longboats arrived of the coast of Francia in 820, but were easily driven away with small loss of Frankish life. However, as spring followed spring a terrible pattern emerged, these Northmen reappeared, more numerous, more determined and more vindictive to the Christian population. In the beginning, the Franks had dismissed the Viking threat as a few boatloads of pyratae, however, by the middle of the ninth century they had learnt better, for they now realised they were dealing with daemonum cultoribus. To the Frankish clerics who recorded the Northmen's raged incursions, they were agents of immorality, death and destruction. They were the pagani, heathen, and the Anglo-Saxons chroniclers agreed, for they too called them heathene men, and so too did the Arabs of Spain, who called them al-Majus, fire-worshipper, wizard, heathen. The pagan consciousness of the Viking worshipped many gods that were perfect war archetypes to admire and mimic, and their rituals certainly involved human sacrifice, especially of important victims to Odin. This cruel ritual was in the form of the blood-eagle. That is, after the victim had been a target for spears or arrows, he was stretched out face-down over a stone, and his ribs torn upwards from the spine forming a shape suggestive of an eagle's wing, before he was finally beheaded. Kings Aella of Northumbria, Maelgualai of Munster and Edmund, amongst countless unknown others, were probably victim of this barbarous act. The Vikings were resolute pagans who proved resistant to Christian conversion; in fact, they were very hostile to the religion and consciously anti-Christian: Thor's hammer became a potent symbol in opposition to the cross. The witness of the clerics was unanimous and from very different sources and disparate places: the raiding Viking was a fearsome enemy of Christ that continually pillaged sacristies, altars and reliquaries with no intrinsic material value. Reliquaries were a particular target, for repeatedly, we read of the desperate effort made by the monks to hide their saints' relics from the searches of the Viking raider. More understandable is the fact that the mass-wine was also a favourite target of the Viking. Relics and mass-wine were the special objects of plunder by the Northmen whose consequence was the burning and destruction of churches and monasteries.

The repeated and savage attacks on Frankish settlements greatly disturbed civil life. Devastated towns suffered rapid depopulation, as did the surrounding countryside. Burning and looting was on a grand scale, and material losses were immense. Rouen, Nantes, Bordeaux, Orléans, Paris and the Seine towns were all victims to the pagan onslaught, their hinterlands ravaged and depopulated, and the civil order and nascent civilisation threatened with extinction. The Vikings amassed great wealth from Francia by a form of extortion, called Danegeldin England, which required victims to pay tribute to the Vikings. The Northmen were also great slave-traders, and everywhere they struck, they reduced captives to slaves that were sold in disparate markets. It is clear that in western Francia, depopulation of the land was greatly increased by the Viking appetite for slaves.

Yet, the Northmen did nothing that their victim's ancestors had not done. The blood-ties of the tribe and the glorification of both the individual and the tribe by feats of valour were common to both Norseman and the Franks. The beleaguered west Europeans however found succour in two sources of strength. The first was the soothing teachings of Christianity and the civil traditions of Rome. These two civilising forces eventually tamed all the peoples in Western Europe; they settled down to farm the land, perfect animal husbandry, build cities, study letters, ordain laws, and trade instead of plunder. The second source was the very wellspring from which the invader tapped into: the wild urges of the Teutonic blood. This atavistic faculty of blood-bonds, oaths and the pursuit of military glory were reactivated in the breasts of the Frankish menfolk in defence of their lands. Concerted defence of the vast borders was difficult to achieve and the despair this created in the land could only be countered by piecemeal acts of valour by individual and small bands of defenders. The Frankish knights would set out to avenge the incursion by Magyar, Saracen, and Viking in a manner they only could: they answered the call of blood, saddled their horse, donned armour, sword, and lance, and pursued the retreating brigands. Caught between the murderous exploits of these two implacable foes were the placid folk that desired only stability and peace in which to carry on with their lives. Lands that were subject to frequent attack suffered a seemingly inexorable decline that contemporary writers recorded with dismay. Prosperous towns atrophied and dwindled into forlorn villages, cultivated fields were abandoned, became wastes, agriculture declined and new lands left undeveloped. Even monasteries, the crucibles of learning and piety, were not safe, and were in fact magnets for the Norsemen, who were attracted to them for their treasures and easy loot. The assaults appeared so concerted and devastating that the prescient observer felt that he was witness to the end of civilisation. The flame of culture that had arisen from the ashes of the Roman Empire appeared to be in danger from the brutal onslaught of pagan hordes that mercilessly pillaged the settled Christian lands of west Europe. The Carolingian Empire, so hard fought for, and the fruit of immense hard labour, perished under the remorseless bludgeoning of pagan hordes.

Yet, to the knightly nobles of Christendom, the descendents of the old comitatus, this incessant warfare was what they were bred to do. War was their only proper business. The continual pressures of perpetual conflict however engendered a lust for war, which in turn nurtured a ferocity and anger equal in measure to that of the invader. Not surprisingly, this lust, ferocity and anger became the predominant themes in the epic poetry of the period. However, in later poetic forms of the genre, this barbarity was concealed beneath a veneer of chivalrous conduct and nobility of spirit.

The swearing of oaths is as ancient as the sun. The old Germanic way was for the kneeling covenanter to put his hands between another, and offering his submission in return for protection, then rise, and kiss his new overlord. This was the ancient Teutonic way of tying the feudal bond, by oath and homage, between a man with his master. During the Carolingian period, this ancient practice was modified when the oath of faith, or fealty, was taken on sacred relics or the Gospel, giving the rite a Christian blessing. Soon, the assimilation of elements of Roman Law and tradition with Germanic customs created an intricate world of dependencies from slave to king. This move to feudalism was galvanised by the pagan incursions, since the need for mutual protection against these invaders was an obvious stratagem. Necessity and self-interest, tempered by the imperatives of social status, were the three factors that moulded the feudal system into being. Once free men, bound only by blood-loyalty to the tribe, became vassals of an overlord willingly, because of fear or poverty, or were coerced into servitude by blackmail and intimidation. The great insecurity borne of ceaseless invasions convince many men to voluntarily seek the protection of a strong master, whilst the lord with many dependants was a power in the land.

The core of the Frankish military power was the heavy cavalry. It was this potent weapon that eventually quelled the riotous Norseman, who pragmatically took to the horse when they settled in Normandy. The lessons learnt from the Franks were put to good use by the squadrons that William the Conqueror took with him that annihilated the infantry of the Saxon king, Harold. The Franks had realised long ago that the power of heavy cavalry when used adroitly, was the factor that won battles. Their reliance on cavalry became such that infantry was almost excluded from consideration in any battle plan. However, to equip cavalry was an expensive affair. So too was the exhaustive training needed to make a proficient horse-soldier. Cavalry was therefore a product of wealth, leisure and long-training. The precarious nature of society at this time coupled to the economic reality underpinning cavalry brought about the feudal arrangement whereby society supported a privileged class of leisured wealthy warmongers. These were the bellatores of society, the noble knights, who applied a devotion to the art of war that rivalled that of any pious clergyman in prayer. A contemporary French poem described the elegant social arrangement thus:

The work of the clerk is to prey to God, and of the knight to do justice, while the labourer finds their bead. One labours, one prays, and another defends. In the field, in the town, in the church these three help one another according to right order."

The feudal system was defended by apologetics supposedly founded on the wisdom of antiquity. This theory asserted that all sensible peoples had approved this social arrangement since early times. Greek philosophers had taught that a lord had the onerous task of defending lands, defeating enemies and dispensing justice, and therefore was worthy of his privileges. The overlord was merely a creation of mutual self-interests. The powerful lord defeated and restrained the strong, whilst the small folk basked in the protection provided by their master. The lord would, continued the theory:

"... give to each man his rights, so that each may live according to his condition, the poor with their poverty and the rich with their riches."

It is human nature to honour courage in times of war. It is also human nature to honour the defenders of the tribe and nation. Thus, the knight who guarded the lands against the pagan invader was elevated to the front rank of society and became 'noble'. The elevated status accorded the knight was also tacit glorification of the ideal of war. The knight was free of the burdens of the serf and villeins, free of the need to labour for subsistence, and therefore free to indulge in the very thing he was born to do- fight. The knight was born and bred for nothing other than fighting, and he approached this calling with a passion of a lover. However, this exalted status aroused iniquitous passions that nurtured the ugly qualities of the individual knight. Barbarity was the everyday currency in which this individual dealt, and the exalted position in his society appeared to sanctify its use. The combination of atavistic blood-consciousness of the warrior, wanton savagery, and the exaltation of its use were a heady brew few could handle easily. In fact, it made him almost ungovernable. This was particularly a problem for kings who were separated and distant from these knights by distance and blood. Feudalism was essentially an expanded system of loyalty based on the ancient rites of blood-ties and oaths. A knight, who would die at an instant in defence of his kith and kin, or immediate overlord, would just as easily turn away than follow an order from an aloof king. A king could invariably depend on the loyalty of his own 'men', the courtiers surrounding him at court, but those who were not of this clique were less sure in their devotion. Blood-ties among feudal knight were a paramount concern in their dealings with the greater world. Personal pride and family honour were the predominant concerns of knighthood, not abstract notions of nationhood and rights of kings.

The knight was a feared figure who could incite fear in both friend and foe alike. Kings oft complained of their unruliness, pride and selfishness, whilst merchants and townsman cast a weary eye over itinerant knights who could turn on the instant and plunder their wares. Knightly honour was a malleable commodity that could easily be perverted by the virtueless who would ravage the wealth of gentlefolk rather than the invader. Plundering their own peoples lands was a familiar practice of some knights, who regarded it as the normal booty of feudal war. Venal knights littered the feudal landscape like stars in the night sky. All except the very strong were fair game, and the choicest of all were the peasants, who were the chief victims of the knight's rapacity.

At the turn of the millennium, the precarious state of Europe had stabilised and the conditions giving rise to the feudal cavalry were fast disappearing. The great invasions issuing from the vast eastern grasslands and northern fjords were over. Established borders and static nations now characterised the landscape of Western Europe. The knight had proven both his worth and the power of heavy cavalry as a superior battle weapon. The exploits of the knight was victoriously celebrated by the victory of the French Norseman cavalry over the Anglo-Saxons infantry at the Battle of Hastings.

The aggrieved William, Duke of Normandy (1028–87), illegitimate son of Duke Robert 'the Devil,' launched an invasion of England in 1066, claiming that his relative King Edward the Confessor had bequeathed him the English throne. He met the Anglo-Saxon king, Harold (II) Godwinson (c.1020–66) at Hastings on 14 October 1066 and engaged him in battle. In a desperately fought affair, the mercenary mounted knights of Duke William finally crushed the resistance of the seemingly unyielding housecarls of Harold and the native levies of the English fyrd. Heavy cavalry again had proved its worth against even the most resolute of foot soldier. The determination of the Saxons was galvanised by their knowledge of how the Norman feudal nobles and their knights had behaved upon first alighting from their boats in Kent and Sussex. Barbarity and wanton destruction were given free reign by William, actions that primed all England for what to expect from unbridled feudal nobles.

The barbarous nature of the feudal noble proceeded him to the east long before the advent of the First Crusade. The Byzantine Empire was the direct continuation of the Roman Empire in the East, and had inherited many of its traditions and institutions. It was a mature urbane society that had long ago harnessed the passions of men for the greater good. What they heard of the western knight filled them with trepidation.

Anna Comnena (1083–c.1148) Byzantine historian, and daughter of the emperor Alexius I, Comnenus (1048–1118), chronicled the reign of her father. Her reason was"…. to record in full my father's deeds, so that future generations may not be deprived of knowledge of them." She wrote that her father viewed the approach of the westerners with apprehension:

"He feared the incursions of these people, for he had already experienced the savage fury of their attack, their fickleness of mind, and their readiness to approach anything with violence."

And although he managed the difficult passage of the First Crusade through Byzantine territory on its way to Jerusalem, his fears were founded on good reasons. Alexius was an able general and administrator who had stopped, with assistance from the Venetians, a Norman invasion of Albania in 1085 and 1108. He witnessed first hand the wanton and crude destructive nature of the Latins. He was also aware of the nature of Latin Europe, and how feudalism had created division and jealousy everywhere it existed. Countries were split into provinces, provinces into seigneuries, seigneuries into lesser fiefs; creating a maelstrom of petty and covetous hatreds and ambitions that perpetually threatened peace. He saw how the feudal lords would sally forth, at will, from the security of the fortified houses and commit acts of robbery and rebellion against all that he so desired. Alexius was acutely aware how the conflicting interests of venal knights had reduced life in the west to a simple equation of predator and victim. The situation was explained by a contemporary chronicler, who said that the fortified house of these knights:

"... enabled these men, always preoccupied with quarrels and massacres, to protect themselves from their enemies, to triumph over their equals, to oppress their inferiors."

The Byzantine Emperor was apprehensive for good reason. The Latin knight was often a tyrant to the people, a danger to kings, and an acute embarrassment to the Church. The rampant power-urge energising these knights had created fractious and malevolent beasts that ranged across Europe with apparent impunity. The situation caused trepidation and despair in sensitive observers of these wanton acts. The evil of feudalism and the wanton acts of noble knights had to be transfigured to allow the new Christian impulse to flow through society and thereby initiate a new moral prospect to arise from these ignoble conditions.

The idealised conduct depicted in the epic poetry hid the real character of the early knight and another reality. The old pagan blood still coursed through the veins of these knights, and an atavistic memory of the deeds of their ancestors compelled them to ever-greater feats of courage fuelled by an ancient berserker fury. The decorous and languid imagery of the later Grail romances did not reflect the reality of the early centuries of the knight. Treachery, cunning, pride, cruelty and blood-lust were carried out in a perpetual state of vanity in this much harsher and brutal world. In this authentic venal world of the last centuries of the first millennium, no knight could be trusted. Spite, jealousy and the self-serving maintenance of personal honour and prestige were the real motivations to action. Personal honour had a peculiarly rarefied status in the courts of Europe that was best guarded by displays of wanton slaughter and the amassing of loot. Even the great emperor Charlemagne found it difficult to restrain the selfish rages of his nobles. Thus, the needless brutal end of a favourite, Roland and other knights of Charlemagne, at their last stand against the Basques at Roncesvalles, was transformed into an 11th-century epic poem that says nothing of the real motivations of the protagonists. The foolhardy assault against unfavourable odds and the wilful refusal to summon Charlemagne to their aid meant certain slaughter for Roland and his knights. This foolhardy act was transfigured by later chroniclers into a tale that tells of the real and imaginary deeds in a romantic concoction that satisfied the expectations of its readers. The Chanson de Roland was the fruit of an overripe romantic mind rather than a faithful rendition of history. The authentic mien of early western knighthood was not the romantic Arthurian and Grail lineament of later times, but pride, greed, foolhardiness and shameless brutality.

Hidden beneath the rich tapestry of the epic poetry of the period is the darkness of personal moral evil, which the fanciful, wishful thinking of the poets cannot assuage completely. Careful study of these contemporary poems reveals petty cruelties rather than noble causes. The heroes are in essence anti-heroes who are often depicted as despoilers of churches, murderers of nuns, rebellious vassals of the king, and merciless destroyers of all who oppose their wishes. No moral argument or restraint would appease the ancient blood of the Teuton, once inflamed by passion. The warrior roused to battle heeded no calls of love, mercy, faith or loyalty, but plunged headlong into the fray free of all restraint and all measure of control.

War itself had been sanctified by the greatest of the early theologians, Augustine of Hippo, who argued that the wicked went unchecked and prospered by their deeds if they were not contained by a greater force. He argued that a righteous war against wickedness was morally justified and sanctified by God himself. "Such crimes must be punished and that is the reason why, according to God's commands and by lawful authority, good people are compelled to engage in certain wars." In fact, argued theologians, war itself was first carried out in heaven

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven." (Rev. 12:7-8).

"Hence it is no great marvel that if in this world," wrote a 14th century theorist, "there arises wars and battles." However, the celestial precedent was not a license for terrestrial barbarity. Augustine, the advocate of the just war, also distinguished this from the evil of wanton acts. "What is blameworthy", he wrote, is not the moral necessity to fight but:

".. the desire to hurt other men and the cruel love of vengeance. It is this implacable spirit, this enemy of peace, this savagery of revolt, this passion for domination and empire … he who can think of war and bear the thought without great sorrow is indeed a man dead to human feelings."

The feudal knights, empowered by his exalted status and the dependency of the commonwealth on his prowess in battle, took notice of the precept by the eminent theologian to conduct the just war against the infidel and the invader. To wage the righteous war soon became the fundamental duty of the feudal overlords. The protection of the true faith and safeguard Christendom, and thereby ensuring the salvation of his people, became the knight's primary duty. The early Church Fathers and Popes however exhorted against wanton cruelty and barbarous acts and they had been constant in their condemnation of violent men. For the biblical texts were clear: those who live by the sword die by the sword. Yet, exhortation by pious men was not enough to quell the savagery of the knight. Indeed, even the action of the clergy militated against these moral reproaches, for abbots and bishops were obliged by feudal ties to often enter the fray. Clergymen were often owners of great estates and therefore obliged to provide armed levies in times of trouble, and the figure of a militant priest at the head of his battalion was a familiar image in these troubled times. Church-warriors, the monk-knights, were often respectable and honourable warriors, many however, were no better than bandits. Some corrupted ecclesiarchs, such as Philippe de Dreux, robber Bishop of Beauvais, the bane of Richard the Lionheart, rode across the land killing, burning, and looting. The Church knew first hand the morally corrupting influence of power on the souls of its clergy. Priests corrupted by the twin evils of the lust for power and greed often outdid knights in their barbarity. However, most witnessed the moral degeneracy caused by the unchecked wantonness of petty fiefdoms at constant war, as well as the supplications of gentlefolk for peace.

Kings, nominally the power in the land, were often penniless and their power curbed by the feudal system that limited the direct influence of the king on his subjects. If they desired to moderate the excesses of their nobles they often as not had no power to enact their wishes. However, compassionate monarchs were the rare exception. The rule was not the talk of peace but of war, death and violence. The great king Charlemagne did have power, and he decreed that it was forbidden to prosecute blood-feuds on a Sunday. Such enlightenment was rare indeed at this time.

At Charroux in 989, a council of bishops attempted to address the problem of capricious evil by imposing the Church's formal limit on violence, and attempt to bring a state of ordered tranquillity into human affairs. This council anathematised those who broke open churches, attacked unarmed clerics or stole from peasants. The following year, a synod in Le Puy extended this protection to merchants and their works. The movement spread around France, becoming a form of feudal compact sanctioned by oath, although many noble knights refused to join. This movement to limit the field of action to direct combatants and protect the innocent bystander was called the Pax Dei, the Peace of God. The exact details varied according to the location in which the compact was arranged, but the intention was the same: control of war and violence. The church formula for peace reached its apogee in the medieval period with the Truga Dei, the Truce of God, which proscribed private wars at certain times. Accomplished by the Council of Elne (1027), this formula prohibited armed hostilities from sundown on Saturday to Monday morning. By 1041 the Truce of God had, theoretically, sway over a good portion of the week, from Wednesday night to the following Monday morning. Later decrees extended the prohibition of private wars to operate from Advent to the octave of Epiphany and from Septuagesima to the octave of Pentecost. The feast days of various saints were also brought under the Truga Dei. These extensions to the Truce meant that warmongers that wished to keep the compact were short of time in which to carry out their plans. Consequently, the provisions in the Truce of God were widely flaunted.

The Church's attempt to limit the violent excesses of the laity and its clerics was not a success. Knights used to the amoral dispensation society had reluctantly given him refused to be cowed by these new ethics. Many feudal knights would have no truck with these pacts that sought to limit their agreeable life of arbitrary power. Similarly, many of the clerics believed that it was no business of them or the Church to meddle in the secular affairs of lords. The long-oppressed peasants at this time found and allay in the ethos of the Truce and militias arose in certain areas to protect their lowly interests. Robber barons were even attacked in their fortified houses by peasant militias intent on vengeance for centuries of oppression. Bands of peasants and townspeople formed out of mutual self-preservation to counter the violence of feudal knights. The disruption was great in some areas, nearly bringing these regions to the brink of civil war. This of course was not what the Church or the enlightened feudal overlords wanted from the Truga Dei or the Pax Dei. These formulations were intended to limit arbitrary power not instigate the overthrow of established order. Prudence prevailed, and the bishops, nobles and robber barons banded together to defeat the aspirations of the peasantry for the sake of proper order and the sanctity of old institutions. European society was not yet ready for universal freedoms and the peasantry was dealt with as brutally as had any infidel or invader.

This then was the reality of the harsh feudal landscape across Western Europe: a pitiless affair whose arbiter of pain was the feudal knight. Venality and self-aggrandisement were the two dominant ambitions of these knights, which were invariably consummated by the use of arbitrary power. Ancient blood-ties and atavistic echoes of pagan ancestral heroics were to many knights the only things worthy of consideration. Their ethos was wholly at odds with the idealised conduct depicted in the epic poetry of the period. Evil was obviously rampant across the feudal landscape of Europe.